But first ye'll let the black gae by,
And then ye'll let the brown;
Then I'll ride on a milk-white steed,
You'll pull me to the ground.
- "Tam Lin," Child Ballad version #39C

This book is for the Bad Poets and for Jennifer Jackson, who between them made me keep writing it until I got it right.

Mathew the Magician leaned against a wrought iron lamppost on Forty-second Street, idly picking at the edges of his ten iron rings and listening to his city breathe into the warm September night.

He laughed; the Fae do not have friends. "Your son is in the hallway, my Queen. He says he wishes to speak with you."